After last weekend's short story success I am going to spend a little more time with Short Story Masterpieces edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine or perhaps another anthology of classic short stories. There are so many authors to explore--some I have heard of but never read and some completely new to me. I see lots of familiar names of authors whose works have been widely anthologized, and my mood is turning me in their direction at the moment. Ring Lardner falls into that first category. Isn't Ring (short for Ringgold) a cool name? I think he is best known for his sports writing and his satirical stories about a number of topics including sports, marriage and theater. Interestingly the two stories I read indeed focus on the latter two subjects.

The second story I'm going to tell you about is from an older, out-of-print collection called The Scribner Treasury: 22 Classic Tales published in 1953. The Scribner collection actually has a little biographical information.

"Among that talented group of magazine-fiction writers who live the years 1914-1929 a special brilliance in the annals of American letters, there was no better story-teller than Lardner and none whose darts of satire struck deeper into the rhinoceros hide of a generation complacently devoted to mammon (otherwise known to people like me who had to look this word up--greed)."

"Up to the time of the publication of How to Write Short Stories (1924), his reputation had been that of a sports-writer with a difference--a man with the gift of vivid language, an ear for the turns of common speech, and a refreshingly humorous approach to such ancient American sanctities as the game of baseball."

From the two stories I've read this weekend I see that his work is satirical and ironical and at times really pretty funny. I wonder if other readers might think his writing is "dated"? Not the actual writing style but the dialogue perhaps, or the characterizations? I had heard of Lardner before, but this was my first opportunity to read him. He captures the feel and flavor of the era as well as conveys the speech and colloquialisms of those years. Both stories are from the 1920s.

"Liberty Hall" was published in Lardner's collection Round Up in 1924 and is narrated by the wife of a famous and successful music composer who is not allowed to be at his ease while on a short holiday. He loathes nothing more than being recognized and fawned over. And more often than not, or that is comfortable anyway, he and his wife are roped into doing things they would prefer not. Dinner tonight? No, not possible? Okay, tomorrow then. Or maybe next Tuesday or August 4 . . . No does not seem to be an acceptable answer to his fans.

"My husband is in Atlantic City, where they are trying out 'Dear Dora', the musical version of 'David Copperfield'. My husband wrote that score. He used to take me along for these out-of-town openings, but not anymore."

It's the reason for that 'not anymore' that the story is being told. The Drakes actually have an "emergency exit" for those times when they have agreed to lunch or drinks or dinner at someone's home and then discovered they are "caught" in an agonizing situation--gushing or irritating fans or over familiarity or awkwardness. Mr. Drake often uses a lost filling or a necessary rewrite comes up at the last minute or telegram calling him back to New York in order to get out of a social event that turns out to be excruciatingly annoying.

Mr. Drake seems easily (and often) annoyed, but it's hard to blame him really. They make an exception for the Thayers. They had seemed so normal at first. The couples just seemed to click. And yes, there was that invitation that could not be turned down. Dates compared and decided upon. A break is not a bad thing and the Thayers assure Mr. Drake he will get a proper rest--no work allowed. True to her word Mrs. Thayer keeps the Drakes, in particular Mr. Drake, from any semblance of an enjoyable long weekend. You've met her sort before--she is always right. No cream in your coffee, Mr. Drake? But surely this can't be true! You've never tasted my cream . . . When Mr. Drake asks to use their piano so he can jot down a tune going through his head she is sure he is simply trying to repay her many kindnesses by giving her the pleasure of playing for her. No, no, you really mustn't--please just rest and keep away from that piano!

"If only we could have spent all our time in the guest-room. It would have been ideal."

It was "painful" (though highly amusing) to read about the Thayers' sort of hospitality!

In "The Golden Honeymoon" from the Scribner collection, yet more satirizing of a very long marriage (fifty years together) celebrated by taking a second honeymoon trip to beautiful, sunny Florida. Curiously the story first appeared in Cosmopolitan in 1922 (I wonder what Cosmo readers would think of it now!). What are the chances that "Mother's" old beau and his wife would happen to be staying at the same hotel! This story is narrated by the husband ("Mother" threw me off--I really did think he was writing about his mother at first until I realized "Mother" is his wife).

It's an interesting portrait of a long marriage. You get a sense of class and culture by the language used in the narration of the story. Although I liked the first story a tad more, I found this second one just as amusing and it elicited more than one out-loud guffaw from my own lips. The husband is an interesting observer of the foibles of those around him. The two sets of couples are into their seventies, long accustomed to each other yet their interaction is most illuminating--there are a few "what ifs . . .", of the sort you come across from pairs who have a very long-standing relationship.

To give you a flavor of the writing style--and I could so well imagine the old gentleman saying this--the two couples had been playing cards together (keeping in mind they are vacationing in Florida):

"After the game she brought out a dish of oranges and we had to pretend it was just what we wanted, though oranges down there is like a young man's whiskers; you enjoy them at first, but they get to be a pesky nuisance."

There is a bit of a competitiveness going on between the two pairs--particularly the men seeing as one had formerly been betrothed to the other's wife. Card games and checkers and even pitching horseshoes. And the insults fly fast and furious--well, sort of furious anyway.

"'Well, checkers ain't much of a game now anyway, is it?' she [Mrs. Hartsell, the wife of the former beau] said: 'It's more of a children's game, ain't it? At least, I know my boy's children used to play it a good deal.'

'Yes, ma'am', I said. 'It's a child's game the way your husband plays it, too'."

Hah.

Ring Lardner is pretty darn amusing and a good find. I am not much into sports so sports writing would never be much of a draw for me, but I will happily pick up another short story by Ring Lardner. If you are looking for something light and amusing but a story written with a wry eye, do check him out. I wonder who I should read next. So many wonderful possibilities in my collections . . . I have a whole stack of them sitting by my bed even as I type.

Henry James, why have I avoided reading you for so long? I knew I liked your work. First I tried The Turn of the Screw and was suitably impressed--not only a ghost story, but a really good one. A thoughtful one that made me think and sent chills up my spine. You left me wondering and thinking just as any really good book should do. And then I tried Washington Square and was even more impressed. Gorgeous prose, another thoughtful story that left me thinking again with heartfelt feelings of disappointment for Catherine. She was only trying to find some happiness like we all are. And now I am thinking that maybe reading The Portrait of a Lady is really the true beginning of what might just be a little (maybe even big) love affair with you. Hopefully a life long affair. Some books, some authors have that sort of effect on readers. Raising hand here, that's me and you and this book.

I was a little apprehensive that I might not be a good enough reader for you. You would smugly scoff at my attempts to find my way into this story. Some books take a little time and effort to begin showing a reader some rewards. But I find that on both counts I was wrong. From the first page you had me hooked. And here is a real test. You're going to think me a little strange perhaps, but I do quite a lot of my reading at the gym. Yes, it can be noisy and distracting there. I have to choose my books carefully. But how often do I get half or even a whole hour of reading time where I can just devote myself to my book? I have a lovely paperback Modern Library edition of Portrait, which I have been slipping into my bookbag daily. But I decided on a whim to load a digital copy to my tablet as well. Just in case. You never know. And then yesterday, I tentatively opened the story up and picked up the thread of the story where I had left off from earlier in the day. I settled into my routine and you whisked me away. The world and all its distractions faded away. There might have not been another person in that gym.

Sometimes I turn a page and am faced with a solid wall of words. No dialogue. Not even a paragraph break. That can be a little intimidating sometimes. As a matter of fact I have often looked longingly at this very book (and it has been a constant inhabitant in my bedroom on a shelf by my bed--never relocated to some bin or storage area or sunk to the bottom of a pile of books and hemmed in by other piles of books), but then thought maybe not. Not until I can devote long stretches of quiet reading time to you. And how often do I get that since my reading is almost always cobbled together. Sigh. Maybe another day. And so you kept getting passed by. But all of a sudden it hit me. I wanted to read about Isabel Archer, your lovely and spirited (my first impression) heroine. I thought, I'll risk it. I want a good juicy classic, something I can truly sink me teeth into. I can always quietly put you back if things don't work out.

But you have floored me. Or maybe I have surprised myself. You are not nearly as scary as I have made you out to be. Sorry, not scary, but challenging. (In a good way, of course). I have not read your preface yet or the introduction. I only know that this is considered by some to be your masterpiece. It is a mid-career book and not nearly as difficult structure-wise as your later work. Whatever the reason I have settled comfortably into the story and want to keep reaching for you. I am pleased to think you are not going to get quietly set aside or end up languishing on a pile of in progress books. I think we are a pair and you will be always close by my side for the duration of the story you are telling.

Thank you for being so patient with me Mr. James. I am sure this book is going to be well worth the wait. Maybe it and you came along at just the right moment. I hope you won't mind if I share some of your prose with my friends? Which bit do you think they would like? I liked this bit about Isabel's cousin Ralph. A banker like his father, though due to illness he must take care of his health rather than work.

"Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation--a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist."

And this about Isabel is a wonderful first description:

"She saw the young men who came in large numbers to see her sister [elder sister Edith]; but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had a belief that some special preparation was required for talking with her. Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The poor girl liked to be thought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish; she used to read in secret and, though her memory was excellent, to abstain from showy reference. She had a great desire for knowledge, but she really preferred almost any source of information to the printed page; she had an immense curiosity about life and was constantly staring and wondering. She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deeper enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own soul and the agitations of the world."

Oh, and she reads the London Spectator, the poetry of Robert Browning and the prose of George Eliot. I like Isabel.

And now for something a little bit different. I had a feeling I wouldn't manage to read a whole novella this weekend, though I have started it and hope to be able to get back on schedule with it next weekend. So, setting Francis Wyndham aside today, I had to read a short story and decided it was finally time to choose a Library of America story. Did you know there is a weekly freebie story that you can get delivered in your email inbox if you subscribe? Of course you can always visit here for the whole list to dip into at your leisure, too. I know it is a promotional thing to tempt you to buy their books, but how cool is it that they offer a story or excerpt from those books? They've been doing it for a while as they are up to 280 short stories. No excuses--there is always a short story just a click away. They are not all short stories, some are sketches, there are plays, and nonfiction even.

I opted for a story by Louisa May Alcott. I always mean to read more of her writing, and she was a perfect choice. "Anna's Whim" is #246 and is found in Alcott: Work, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, Stories & Other Writing. I like Alcott for her subversive themes that she often used in her writing. Little Women may be a classic with a strong sense of moral rightness and goodness, but if you look at her other works, she was quite a feminist. She wrote "Anna's Whim" shortly after her 1873 novel Work: A Story of Experience. As reviewers of the time noted, the book focuses on that "troublesome theme: what shall women do". Indeed. Anna's whim is not such a strange one. A beauty, Anna wants to be accepted and appreciated on her own terms--not as a fragile woman without an independent thought in her head but treated as a man would treat a fellow man.

Anna and her friend Clara are at the seaside and watch how the young gentlemen speak with the ladies--and how the ladies respond--like simpering fools.

"Why don't men treat me like a reasonable being?--talk sense to me, give me their best ideas, tell me their plans and ambitions, let me enjoy the real man in them, and know what they honestly are? I don't want to be a goddess stuck on a pedestal. I want to be a women down among them, to help and be helped by our acquaintance."

And then comes the real test. A friend of her youth, Frank, shows up at the same resort. A young man she has not seen for a long time, but a friend she was very close to as a girl. No matter the difference of their sexes they could then talk of anything and everything. In her independent ways, she one day is rowing and when he offers to help she tells him no, she can handle herself just fine. The tone is set and he treats her just as any other friend, not as a "lady friend".

It's with the tiniest bit of resentment that she sees Frank act with gallantry with all the other ladies yet with Anna he lets her take the initiative and let's her help herself.

"She presently discovered that he treated other women in the usual way; and at first it annoyed her that she was the only one whom he allowed to pick up her fan, walk without an arm, row, ride, and take care of herself as if she was a man. But she also discovered that she was the only woman to whom he walked to as an equal, in whom he seemed to find sympathy, inspiration, and help, and for whom he frankly showed not admiration alone, but respect, confidence and affection."

"This made the loss of a little surface courtesy too trifling for complaint or reproof; this stimulated and delighted her; and in striving to deserve and secure it, she forgot everything else, prouder to be one man's true friend than the idol of a dozen lovers."

This is a marvelous story, with (of course) a twist at the end. What I find most fascinating is that this isn't a contemporary writer writing a set piece, but this is Louisa May Alcott, a 19th century woman not just feeling this way, but writing about it. How many women would have read it and been able to not just relate but wish the same thing?

Reading her puts me in mind of Harriet Reisen's book about Alcott that I read more than five years ago. I would happily pick it up again to reread or maybe something else about Alcott as a refresher. And if nothing else maybe one of her thrillers? I have a few books somewhere on my shelves . . .

* * *

As for this week's hefty New Yorker, I have read Zadie Smith's "Escape from New York" and a few other shorter pieces. This is a quirky story set on September 11, 2001 based on an urban legend. Smith heard somewhere that Marlon Brando, Michael Jackson and Liz Taylor had been in NY on the day of the World Trade Center attacks and had left the city together. The story is narrated by Michael and he leaves NY taking along and Marlon (Marlon being a rather massive man in need of numerous stops out of the city at various fast food restaurants) and Liz (and a huge pile of Louis Vuitton luggage). It is all very tongue in cheek and she never explicitly says who the characters are meant to be. It was only in the Q&A that she mentions her inspiration being this urban legend. I'm not sure what I think of the story to be honest. Apparently she wrote the story as a distraction from another piece of writing she was meant to be making progress but wasn't in the mood for. I think I am a little tired of dystopian/post-apocalyptic short stories, of which there seem to be many in the New Yorker these days. (Sometimes a little bit goes a very long way with me). I'll be curious what the other longer stories are like--next up should be a story by Jonathan Franzen.

My, how time flies. Remember this post? Probably not and that's okay. I am almost too embarrassed to mention it since I wrote it at the end of 2012. Maybe we could almost call it 2013 and then it wouldn't seem as though so much time has passed. I am always so full of plans, aren't I?

Since this year is supposed to be all about reading from my own shelves and this piles of lovely little Penguins happens to be sitting out and in my daily line of sight, I was thinking maybe it was time to revamp my plans to read through the Penguin Great Food series of books. What initially prompted it all was reading Agnes Jekyll's A Little Dinner Before the Play, which is a series of columns she wrote for The Times in the 1920s. I really liked it and knew I had to have the whole set, which I then set about acquiring. And they have been sitting, waiting and staring at me ever since.

They are slender little volumes, gorgeously designed--usually selections from larger, longer works, so just the perfect length for a taste--literally and figuratively. A taste of each author's writing and an (imagined) taste of various cuisines from different cultures and at different periods in history. All in all a perfect sampling of writing for a perfect little reading project.

It sounded good at the time and it still sounds pretty good now. I think my error was trying to put them in some sort of order and then read them in said order. I was stuck on the first book--just wasn't quite what I wanted at the moment and so it languished, was set aside and sort of forgotten. But I have decided to give it another go. This time, however, I will choose the books on whim and desire--who cares which order. And I have started with an author I hugely admire--M.F.K. Fisher.

I read and loved her Gastronomical Me. She is not only a most impressive author, but a woman of culture and panache. And while my own palate is pretty unstudied and unsophisticated, I can still love her writing and the things she writes about. I might not be tempted by all the dishes she writes about, but I certainly can appreciate how she writes about them. Maybe I will even read more of her work this year (because after I read her I had to have as much of her other writing as I could get my hands on . . . you know how that goes). But I am starting with the Penguin book, Love in a Dish and Other Pieces, which is a series of culinary essays.

I've read the first essay and am into the second. In it she writes about traveling by train with her uncle from California to Chicago in 1927. I think she must have surely been influenced a little by him. He was a seasoned train traveler and knew how to navigate the system, especially the dining car. When presented with the choice of dishes, she responds with an "I don't really care" and is gently castigated. He tells her she should never reply in such a manner since it is stupid, which she is not.

"It implies that the intentions of your host are basically wasted on you. So make up your mind, before you open your mouth. Let him believe, even if it is a lie, that you would infinitely prefer the exotic wild asparagus to the banal mushrooms, or vice versa. Let him feel that it matter to you . . . and even that he does!"

"'All this', my uncle added gently, 'may someday teach you about the art of seduction, as well as the more important art of knowing yourself'."

The other bit of wisdom from her uncle Evan--"The only test of a good breakfast place is its baked apple". I wonder if you can use that test still these days?!

Other books in the series (and in no particular order to be read):

**The Well Kept Kitchen by Gervase Markham**The Joys of Excess by Samuel Pepys (based on Pepys' diaries)**Everlasting Syllabub and the Art of Carving by Hannah Glasse**Recipes from the White Hart Inn by William Verrall**The Pleasures of the Table by Brillat-Savarin**The Elegant Economist by Eliza Acton**The Chef at War by Alexis Soyer**The Campaign for Domestic Happiness by Isabella Beeton**From Absinthe to Zest by Alexandre Dumas**Notes from Madras by Colonel Wyvern**Buffalo Cake and Indian Pudding by Dr. A.W. Chase**A Dissertation Upon Roasting a Pig and Other Essays by Charles Lamb**Exciting Food for Southern Types by Pellegrino Artusi**A Little Dinner Before the Play by Agnes Jekyll**Love in a Dish and Other Pieces by M.F.K. Fisher**A Taste of the Sun by Elizabeth David**Murder in the Kitchen by Alice B. Toklas**A Middle Eastern Feast by Claudia Roden**Eating with the Pilgrims and Other Pieces by Calvin Trillin (essays appearing mostly in The New Yorker)**Recipes & Lessons from A Delicious Cooking Revolution by Alice Water

Reading by subscription? Or maybe, Reading? . . . by Subscription. This is what happens when you are greedy, have good intentions, but not nearly enough time to read all the books you want to read. Oh, and are a slow reader. A new book arrives on your doorstep each month, gets added to the reading pile, time passes, the book remains unopened, and . . . well, you get the picture. I've not talked about these, have I? Because I look at them longingly, the days fly by and I haven't managed to read, not even a little bit to hook me, a single one.

How do I make good? Pick up this month's book? Pick up the shortest book? The easiest book? Wait until the next book? Take a long vacation with a massive sack full of books? Yes, the last one please. Until then . . . I love my NYRB books, love the subscription, but know that each book is always an undertaking since NYRB publishes high quality thoughtful literature. And that takes time to read.

Edith Wharton writes about that segment of society, or shall I say Society, that few of us are probably privvy to--that wealthy class of people that inhabit a certain station in life (of which I am more than a few rungs down) so very, very well. She knows them, she knows their secrets, and you can tell she doesn't approve but she knows how the game works and either her characters play by the rules and are miserable or don't play by the rules and so are thrown out.

In this weekend's short story from Infinite Riches, "Souls Belated" (I'm still contemplating what the title means), she trains her scalpel on those people who aren't playing by the rules, but the question is, will they get away with it? Even at the end of the story I am not sure they will, or have. "Happy" endings aren't always happy or necessarily satisfying endings.

Two lovers are on a train. Sounds romantic, doesn't it? But two such uncomfortable people they are, you can feel their avoidance of each other. A third person who has just vacated his seat and departed means now they are alone with themselves and each other, and during the course of the story being alone with their thoughts is not attractive. Something stands between Lydia and Gannett. Their silence is not companionable and you can sense a question between the two of them.

"How could it be otherwise, with that thing between them? She glanced up at the rack overhead. The thing was there, in her dressing-bag, symbolically suspended over her head and his. He was thinking of it now, just as she was; they had been thinking of it in unison ever since they had entered the train. While the carriage had held other travelers they had screened her from his thoughts; but now that he and she were alone she knew exactly what was passing through his mind; she could almost hear him asking himself what he should say to her . . ."

This thing is a divorce which Lydia's husband has demanded and the paper announcing the expected result of their affair sits tucked away her suitcase just above their heads. A divorce when you are in love with someone else sounds sort of freeing, don't you think? But when the two arrive at the Italian resort so very far away from their world, they still must play at being a proper couple. It would not do to arrive as a divorcée and her lover.

And so they play the game. The resort is 'ruled' by an upper-class British lady who resides there almost permanently. To be anything other than a proper married couple would mean being ostracized and unaccepted. But the two can pass until Lydia is approached by a guest, the wife of another couple, who sees her for what she really is. This other guest is in the same situation as Lydia, only she is still waiting for word of a divorce. Gannett and this woman's 'husband' were closeted together the night before and she threatens to expose Lydia for what she truly is unless she finds out whether this man is going to leave her or not. Lydia refuses, but it is as if the woman has held up a mirror in front of her face.

"'Oh, do you see the full derision of it? These people--the very prototypes of the bores you took me away from, with the same fenced-in view of life, the same keep-off-the-grass morality, the same little cautious virtues and the same little frightened vices--well, I've clung to them, I've delighted in them, I've done my best to please them'."

Gannett tells her they can go away and marry now that she is free. They can go to Paris and no one will ever know the difference.

"Do you know [Lydia says to Gannett], I begin to see what marriage is for. It's to keep people away from each other."

Lydia feels a fraud. She wants to live by her own rules and be happy with the man she loves but she knows marriage to him will simply destroy what is important to her. It's like having your cake but not being able to eat it, too. So what is the solution? How do you stay true to yourself and be happy, too? Is it possible in this turn-of-the-century world where you are wealthy enough to be 'free', but that freedom will come at a price that may be too high to pay.

Edith Wharton is once again such a perfect observer of this world. I don't know why I've not read my way through her books. I must pick up something longer by her soon.

Next week a story by Jessie Kesson. I'm past the halfway mark with this collection and have only six more stories to read. I have plenty of other collections to choose from, but I am already sad at the thought of finishing this book. I could breeze through the rest, but I want to continue savoring them.

* * *

In his Q&A with the New Yorker, Colm Tóibín mentions that it sometimes takes years for him to write a short story. Knowing the intricacy of his writing, that does not surprise me. There is nothing rushed (and certainly nothing wasted) in his writing. In this week's issue (March 23), Tóibín's story "Sleep" is very revealing. Not just about the main character but also about the writer himself since it is somewhat autobiographical. In the story, an Irishman, keeps having intense and disturbing dreams about his brother. They are so intense that his boyfriend cannot remain in the relationship and leaves him. Once again there is a sense of melancholy about the story, which Tóibín does so well. There is a genuineness to his stories that I like very much.

I know you will understand this dilemma. And this is a problem that requires careful attention and thoroughness since the book I choose to read next will be one I spend a chunk of time with. Technically I should wait until I finish Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata before making a choice, but it's a novella and I am ready for a full length novel. I finished Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange a few days ago, and while I mull it over a bit before writing about it, I am ready for something new and different. I think different will be easy since there are not too many books out there quite like the Burgess . . .

I usually have in mind the next book I want to read even before I finish whatever I have in hand, but I'm not quite sure what I am in the mood for right now. I was thinking of rereading Jane Austen's Persuasion, and you might laugh when you hear the reason why. Well, you won't laugh when I say it is my favorite Austen (of the books I've read--I still have two of her novels waiting for me) and any of her books are always worth revisiting. However, over the weekend I saw the movie Mr. Turner (which I thought was really well done) and loved listening to the very proper way the characters spoke, and which put me in mind of an Austen novel. Jane Austen could turn a mean sentence and to read her fiction is really sort of inspiring to me.

But you know how it goes, you begin looking at your shelves and all of a sudden your pile begins to grow and grow, and while I did put some of them back already, this is what I have ended up with. Maybe Sholem Aleichem's Stempenyu: A Jewish Romance about "a young village girl girl who falls for a wildly popular klezmer fiddler". I don't think I have ever read anything translated from Yiddish before. But I have read this Melville House edition is riddled with typographical errors. And I am already reading a fair amount of literature from the Jewish perspective so maybe something else now?

Which made me pick up Stendhal's The Abbess of Castro. I've never read Stendhal. This is the story of two doomed young lovers (this is a classic, would we expect them to have a happily ever after?--oh, a vote for the Austen, then). It's set in Renaissance Italy and has "plenty of sword fights thrown in" which in my opinion is only a vote in its favor.

Of course if it's sword fights I'm after I could read Alexandre Dumas's Twenty Years After. I loved The Three Musketeers, which is just the first of several books about the quartet of swordsmen. This time out they aren't up against Milady but her son! Somehow I feel like this would be rollicking good fun, but it is a hefty book with tiny print.

I used to read a Wilkie Collins novel (or two) every year but it's been a while since I picked up one of his full length stories (there have been a few short stories and a novella or two in the intervening years). I thought Poor Miss Finch looked interesting. I'm thinking, though, this is not going to be one of his suspenseful sensationalist stories. Not that I have to have that. This is a story of Lucilla Finch who is a blind girl and the two men, twins, who fall in love with her.

There is always Mary Elizabeth Braddon, however, for a little sensationalism. The Trail of the Serpent is about Jabez North, "a manipulative orphan who becomes a ruthless killer", Valerie de Cevennes, "a stunning heiress who falls into North's diabolical trap" and Mr. Peters, "a mute detective who communicates his brilliant reasoning through sign language".

Interesting that the two Victorian novels deal with disabilities--I didn't go looking for books like that.

And for something a little more modern I pulled F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night from the new book pile as it is a recent acquisition. I'm sort of in the mood for something by him. This one is set on the French Riviera in the 1920s and looks to be a sort of love triangle and no doubt story of dissipation.

They all sound good in different ways and I could happily start two or three but more than one new read would be altogether too greedy. Has anyone read any of these and can put in a good word and tempt me in that direction? I'll be dipping into each in turn and seeing which one grabs me and doesn't let go!

I love Willa Cather's work. Who ever would have thought my adult self would say that since when I was a teenager in high school she was so 'talked up' by the nun's that I did everything I could to avoid her work. She wasn't just talked up but more thrust upon us, and being just the tiniest bit rebellious and thinking that anyone else must be better than a Nebraska author (I was dreaming of traveling and of Europe so nothing so close to home could possibly tempt me), but I have changed my tune. She's marvelous.

She tends to be lumped into a class of authors known as regionalists, but she is really so much more than that. Why does that make it sound like her fiction is something less than other classic writers? (Or is my perception off?). Actually as I was reading "The Sentimentality of William Tavener" in Infinite Riches I was thinking how versatile she is. How does someone who was never married write so elegantly and so perceptively about a marriage? I've never thought an author could or should only write about those things they have experienced or that were closest to their lives, but maybe it makes it easier? It certainly doesn't matter in the case of this story--yes, another cracker of a story in a collection filled with them.

The Taveners are a married couple with several children all boys. They are a farm family and so are used to hard work and a certain hardness of character and restrained emotion.

"It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success of living in the West, and Hester undoubtedly was that. When people spoke of William Tavener as the most prosperous farmer in McPherson County, they usually added that his wide was a 'good manager'. She was an executive woman, quick of tongue and something of an imperatrix. The only reason her husband did not consult her about his business was that she did not wait to be consulted."

She's a strong woman and determined, well-spoken and practical. But underneath it all, too, there is a soft spot. For farm boys in a rural area with strict parents and in the early part of the twentieth century proper off the farm entertainments are surely few and far between so when the circus comes to town, it is going to be celebrated and anticipated . . . if you are lucky enough to be able to go. Which the Tavener boys are not allowed.

It's Hester's careful maneuvering and insistence that nothing ever bad came of a group of well-brought up boys like their own going to a circus that will throw new light on her own marriage and subtly change the relationships and dynamics for all of them. As a matter of fact her own story of a youthful outing to a circus brings to light a shared memory they didn't realize they had. Both were at that circus so many years ago not knowing the other at the time. At that moment their marriage takes on a different hue.

"Their relationship had become purely a business one, like that between landlord and tenant. In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband. No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband on behalf of her sons."

That shared moment of this forgotten incident in their youth begins a reminiscence between the two and they begin to really talk again for hours and hours. And it sets a different tone between the two, a remembered history and what initially brought them together. And William pulls from his wallet the money for the boys to go to the circus. An astonishing moment for them when they wake up with the news that they can go and a moment, too, of a tinge of melancholy knowing that in their mother they have perhaps lost a powerful ally. So beautifully told this story of lost or maybe forgotten love remembered and renewed. Such a perfect story for any weekend but especially on Valentine's Day!

Next weekend a story by (an author I keep meaning to get back to) -- Rosamond Lehmann.

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This week's (February 16 issue) New Yorker story is a curious one, but I liked it very much. To be honest I wasn't sure what I thought when I read it, but now that I have sat down and must think about it to write something, it's hit me how much I do like it. I've had an interest in mazes and labyrinths for a while now, just one of those things that hovers in the back of my mind and every once in a while I will come across something about them that will make me think. Amelia Gray's (another new-to-me writer) "Labyrinth" is part of a story collection due out in April called Gutshot: Stories. If you click through on the link and take a peek at the cover illustration you can get an idea of what this story is like--yes, a eerie sort of story indeed.

"Dale had been doing a lot of reading on Hellenic myth, so when he said he had a surprise for us at his Pumpkin Jamboree we knew he wasn't screwing around."

And he wasn't though whether the labyrinth took on a life of its own or if Dale had something to do with it does make me wonder . . . Oops getting ahead of myself here. The jamboree is a fall festival that you would find in a small town or in the countryside and this one includes a labyrinth. Not to be confused with a maze as the two are not alike. " . . . the path is unicursal, not multicursal. There's only one road, and it leads to only one place." You can't get lost, but that doesn't mean there is no point to getting to the middle. And what is in the center is the point and what the reader discovers in the very last line of the story. And I'm not telling, because this is a story you can read for yourself since it is online! So, go on, nudge, nudge. This is a very short story and you can easily read it in a short sitting (and get in a short story this week). Then go and read the author's Q&A here. I'm quite intrigued by her and what she had to say. I like the idea of a retelling of the Theseus myth. And I like what she has to say about short fiction:

"What’s the most a writer can say in the fewest lines? There’s a breathtaking quality to brevity. W. S. Merwin’s 'Elegy' is the poetic equivalent of a leg-sweep takedown. Even when I’m writing longer pieces, I look for small moments, turns of phrase, which allow each scene to stand alone."

I'm definitely going to check out her new collection of stories, and maybe while I'm waiting I'll look for her Museum of the Weird because something 'beguiling' and 'bewitching' sounds like great fun indeed.

My Contemporary Israeli Literature class has not met for two weeks in a row now, and I have to say I am going a little bit into withdrawal. I was a little happy that last week's class was called off due to bad weather (it would not have been a fun walk in all that snow), but I missed not going to this week's class. It was cancelled as my professor was out of town. So, while I didn't actually 'miss' anything, I did miss meeting and discussing our reading.

Last semester the topic we studied was Israeli War Literature and this semester is Israeli Stories with the semester broken into smaller themed units. We began with army stories, Beaufort and Waltz with Bashir and had the weather cooperated would have talked about Shani Boianjiu's The People of Forever are Not Afraid. We'll be talking about it at our next meeting, so I will save it for a proper post then so I can share the insight my class is surely going to offer on her writing. I will say I liked the book very much. It is a group of interlinked stories posing as a novel. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2013 (now the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction), which (as a side note) was an especially strong list from which I am still reading. The Boianjiu is one of the books that most appealed and I had to have it then and there, though it has only taken . . . two years for me to finally read it.

Israeli fiction, maybe most European fiction is very different from American fiction. At least it feels different--different even from the British fiction I read. I'm not sure I can explain how it is different, but maybe by the end of the semester I'll be able to articulate why. It's not exactly the writing style, maybe the content and the way the storytelling is handled? Or maybe it just feels more 'foreign' to me than most of the other books I read. How's that for being vague? Before I took last semester's class I would not have even thought of traveling to Israel or anywhere in the region, but now the more I read the more I want to know and the more I want to travel there. Maybe someday I will. For now there are books and stories.

Although we'll still be talking about war stories and the Boianjiu novel in my class next week, I have started reading the next book, which begins a new themed unit. We'll be spending a couple of weeks on Arabs in Israel and have a story and a novel to read in preparation for the discussion. Yesterday I started reading Sayed Kashua's Second Person Singular. Kashua is an Arab-Israeli writer who I believe is quite successful and popular in Israel right now. His fiction has won prizes and one of his novels was even shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

This is where my books are crossing paths. Yesterday I was reading Nick Hornby and inwardly agreeing with him about reading for pleasure and enjoyment. He is quick to note that readers shouldn't feel as though they 'must' choose books that they think 'ought' to be read. Those books chosen not for pleasure but for the lessons they might teach us. [Disclaimer on my part--I think there is nothing wrong with choosing any book--easy or challenging as long as it is something you are excited to read and enjoy it].

I am going to have a lot to say about the Kashua novel. Only 30 or so pages in and I can already tell this is a novel that has a lot to say about a lot of things in Israeli society and Kashua has piqued my interest and curiosity and has me questioning lots of things and learning lots of things, too. The is about jealousy and maybe about adultery and likely lots of other things, too. It begins with a thirty-ish narrator telling the story. He is a lawyer, an Arab living in the more affluent side of Jerusalem with his wife and children. He is successful and upwardly mobile and you can tell he is trying to improve himself and get on in mainstream Israeli society. In an early scene he is in a bookstore, and this makes me infinitely sad really . . . he picks out a book he is reading in a group and the clerk sneers at him for his choice. " . . . he hated the saleswoman for making him feel the way he did, and predominantly, hated himself for the many things he wanted to know but did not."

He buys the books he reads about in the highbrow Hebrew newspaper he picks up daily. It's mostly modern fiction, but what he really wants is to read the classics, the books that even nonreaders know about, but he is too ashamed to take them up to the clerk as it would be a sort of admission that he doesn't know about any of these books at all. And the last set of literary fiction, the books that are the ones reviewed in the Hebrew paper are not the types of books he likes at all--the last set, he couldn't manage to make it through the first one at all. What he wants is to be able to read the books that all his Jewish peers had read.

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but I am going to say it anyway. I really like this book. It's still very early days, but from almost the first page the (as yet unnamed) narrator has my attention. He buys a copy of Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, which is what the Kashua is modeled after, and this is where the story really begins I think. Yes, there is more to this story than meets the eye. So I have a copy of Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata in hand to read side by side. Now that is has been introduced into the story, I am ready to read. The Tolstoy is a short novella so should be easy to take on with all my other books. I've got a couple of weeks to make my way through the Kashua and Tolstoy, but I think the story is going to move at a nice steady clip. So yet another reading path where books cross and all will be enhanced by listening to Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 9, which I plan on loading on to my MP3 player.

Aren't stories wonderful? How perfect to be transported so many places all at once. Kashua/Israel--Arabs/Jews, Tolstoy/Russia and all to the sounds of Beethoven. Magic.

How's this for a perfect February read? Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Making of a Marchioness? Actually I picked it up specifically for the 1901 slot of my Century of Books project. Every so often I do a little update, think of some way to fill in more blanks, ask for suggestions and then get distracted by some other book. The poor first decade of the 20th century is far too neglected and needs a little attention, however, so no distractions for the short term. Besides I am in the mood for something along the lines of a comfort read. It's more a matter of chance that I noticed one of the blurbs on the back of the book which promises a, "wildly romantic tale whose hero and heroine are totally unromantic". Sounds like just my sort of 'romantic' February read.

Have you ever heard of the "hot-water bottle genre of fiction"? I hadn't before I started skimming the preface (the age old dilemma of whether to read the intro before the novel or wait until I've finished--solved here by skimming just a bit as a teaser to get an idea of what I am in for). I actually have another "February" read all picked out, but I hope to still get to it as well this month. Actually the (and I plan on adopting this phrase as my own now) 'hot-water bottle' reference comes from a quote from the introduction a novel I read and loved a few years back, Mariana by Monica Dickens. (A book I have been wanting to reread by the way). It is referenced in the Burnett.

"It possesses the same bespoke qualities that make Dusty Answer, I Capture the Castle, Rebecca and The Pursuit of Love (I've read all four books! And loved them all!) such thrilling, absorbing, galloping reads. A whole world is conjured up quite effortlessly . . . In other words, Mariana belongs, quite triumphantly, to the hot-water bottle genre of fiction."

It would seem that The Making of a Marchioness can fall tidily into that category (and I bet I could add a few more titles of my own to that list . . . and maybe before the week is out I might just do so), too. The author is best known for her children's classics, The Secret Garden (which I only read as an adult a few years ago), The Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy. The Making of a Marchioness, however entertaining it was known to be, fell out of print and was largely forgotten until (am guessing) Persephone Books came along and rescued it.

It is, like her other novels, a story of class and one woman's entry into the upper classes. All very Edwardian. The heroine is Emily Fox-Seton who is living in genteel poverty. She must work for her keep, but is savvy in looking after herself. She is also thirty-four and likely suffers no illusions of what the world is really like or her place in it. My teaser is a description of Emily--best to get to know her since I'll be spending the next 300 or so pages with her.

"She was a big woman but carried herself well, and having solved the problem of obtaining, through marvels of energy and management, one good dress a year, wore it so well, and changed her old ones so dexterously, that she always looked rather smartly dressed. She had nice round fresh cheeks and nice big honest eyes, plenty of mouse-brown hair and a short straight nose. She was strikingly and well-bred looking, and her plenitude of good-natured interest in everybody, and her pleasure in everything out of which pleasure could be wrested, gave her big eyes a fresh look which made her seem rather like a nice overgrown girl than a mature woman whose life was a continuous struggle with the narrowest of mean fortunes."

She seems quite practical, don't you think? Imagine just one good dress a year? I might even learn a little bit about frugality from her. I'm hoping to finish by Valentine's Day (so I can fit in my other February read in the second half of the month) so Emily will be tucked away in my bookbag this week. I have lots of really good books on the go at the moment. If I can get organized, I'll be telling you all about them this week.